A couple of things to point out about Dawkins. He's got a thing about agnostics in his writings, going so far as to basically call them fence sitters who are hindering the cause of Atheist recognition and letting religious people walk all over them. So when he says Atheist, there's a tiny little parenthetical (and agnostics) that he's leaving out there, because his definition of Atheist includes them. And he's an evolutionary biologist. Religion-any religion-has a cost associated with it in regards to the material world, even if it's just inside your own head. By definition, its an evolutionarily maladaptive trait, even before you get into tithes and time spent. He really does see it as a negative force. What you say is a religious response, he ascribes to the responses of brain chemistry and our basic early childhood learning behavior.
A word of warning: He comes off hard against the bringing up of children in religion in God Delusion and I know you teach Sunday School. I can't recall offhand what he says exactly and my copy is elsewhere, but he has fairly good reasons for it, based on the argument that kids are too young to know what they're getting into.
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Date: 2009-10-28 10:27 pm (UTC)A word of warning: He comes off hard against the bringing up of children in religion in God Delusion and I know you teach Sunday School. I can't recall offhand what he says exactly and my copy is elsewhere, but he has fairly good reasons for it, based on the argument that kids are too young to know what they're getting into.